Living in History
child with a distaste for polemics, it seemed to me I was never done studying about the Reformation. If I escaped briefly from Wycliffe and Cranmer and Knox, it was only to be met by Luther and Calvin and Huss. Everywhere the great struggle confronted me, everywhere I was brought face to face with the inexorable logic of events. That more advanced and more intelligent students find pleasure in every phase of ecclesiastical strife is proved by Lord Broughton's pleasant story about a member of Parliament named Joliffe, who was sitting in his club, reading Hume's "History of England," a book which well deserves to be called dry. Charles Fox, glancing over his shoulder, observed, "I see you have come to the imprisonment of the seven bishops"; whereupon Joliffe, like a man engrossed in a thrilling detective story, cried desperately, "For God's sake, Fox, don't tell me what is coming!"
9
